Tag Archives: walkers crisps

#FOMO

On a recent episode of Hidden Brain NPR host Shankar Vedantam interviewed a woman who spent a lot of time on Facebook. One of the reasons why she did so is because of #FOMO, the fear of missing out on fun or happiness other people might have.

Is there cash inside?

This morning at Victoria Station in London I saw how brands exploit this fear.

The popular Walkers Crips brand challenged travellers to find money in a given amount of time. The way it works is that a person goes inside the box and is subject to a storm of worthless paper, but among these sheets of paper there might be actual money.

Obviously most people come out without have won anything (I didn’t see any winners while I was there) but a substantial number of people were clamouring to try their luck.

You could miss out.

So if you are susceptible to #fomo perhaps you should play the lottery. You never know.